Albion College students show off Bronze Age chariot in public demonstration

ALBION, MI – In an era when textbooks are available on cell
phones and class sessions can be conducted over the Internet, a group of Albion
College students took things back to the Bronze Age on Sunday afternoon.

The students in English Professor Ian MacInnes' first-year
seminar course "Equus: The Horse in Western Culture," along with some family
and friends, gathered at the college's Nancy G. Held Equestrian Center for a
public demonstration of the Bronze Age chariot the class has been building all
semester.

"I never thought we would get this far. I mean, I saw the
drawings and I was like, 'There's no way, this is out of control,'" said
Melanie Fodera, one of the 10 students in the class.

Every freshman at the college is required to take a
first-year seminar course, and MacInnes' focuses on the role of animals,
specifically the horse, in the development of human civilizations and cultures.

The chariot, described by MacInnes as a mix of Greek and
Egyptian styles, is made of mostly oak and ash wood and held together with
different glues and rawhide. Students were divided into groups focusing on
different aspects of the project and met weekly for building sessions
throughout the semester along with the help of local experts.

"The class wanted to make an authentic chariot, so we wanted
to use as little modern day technology as possible," said class mentor Katie
Oldenburg, a senior at Albion College.

"We used as little nuts and bolts as possible ... we actually
had to learn how to hand-make things in the woodshop and we didn't really have
a background knowledge of that."

In the interest of historical accuracy, the chariot was
hooked up to two ponies that were each 12 hands in size – the average size of
chariot horses shown in the students' research.

After a few adjustments, the chariot was ready for action
and being pulled around the arena at the equestrian center where students
eventually took turns riding their historically accurate creation.

"It's exciting to see it ready to go. It's a little
unbelievable that we actually pulled it off and it's all here," MacInnes said. "It's something that seems like it's off a movie set or something, it just looks
cool."

Throughout the class, the students were required to write
research papers about different aspects of the chariot and how it was used in
various societies throughout history, MacInnes said. The final project will be
to put together the video clips that were shot throughout the process into a
documentary-type film.

"I think they had a good time doing it," MacInnes said. "It certainly
gets them more engaged than some more traditional ways of teaching the same
kind of material."